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Malala discharged from UK hospital

The 15-year-old's brain swelled dangerously days after the shooting, so doctors in Pakistan extracted a section of her skull about the size of a hand. Otherwise, the pressure in her cranium would have caused severe brain damage, likely killing her.

"There is no doubt that the surgery performed in Pakistan was life-saving," Dr. Dave Rosser, medical director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, UK, said Wednesday at a news conference.

With the patch of skull missing, Malala is limited in what she can do. Her brain is vulnerable to injury, if she bumps her head in the wrong way. Only her skin and soft cranial tissues stand between the outside world and her brain, and that's not enough.

Doctors could have covered the breach with the original piece of her skull, which she has carried under her skin since October, where a surgeon in Pakistan implanted it for safe keeping.

That's a common procedure to preserve bone fragments for later use, Rosser said.

But her own skull section would have no longer fit properly without the addition of some titanium parts, as her head and the bone fragment have changed.

Titanium also has a low incidence of infection and can be handcrafted to near perfection, doctors told her.

"It was Malala's final decision," Rosser said. She picked the titanium plate.

She will also receive a cochlear implant to restore hearing to her left ear, in which she is currently deaf. The gunfire broke the delicate bones that help turn sound into sensory impulses to the brain.

The device will not allow her to hear completely naturally but will restore enough function to the damaged ear to allow her to hear in three dimensions, which is important for safety. It will allow her, for example, to hear an approaching car, Rosser said.